Why is the Demand for Senior Care Franchises Rising?

The demand for senior care within the UK is at an all-time high and this is increasing the need of senior care franchises. The surprising aspect of this increase in demand is that it has nothing to do with the current performance or marketing of senior care franchises, its all related to the UK population.

UK Population Expectations

If you look at the infographic below, you will see that in 2016 the UK had a population of 65,648,051, this is an increase of 8,209,354 over the previous 25 years. When you compare this to the expected population of 2036, which is only 20 years difference, you shall notice a further increase of 7,712,853. These figures demonstrate that the UK is growing at an exponential rate and currently has no expectation of decreasing.

Why is the Population Increasing?

The recorded population for 1991 and 2016 shows that the UK population is increasing, however the reason we can predict a further growth is because we understand the metrics that are driving this. This expected increase is derived from two main statistics:

Births vs Deaths

The understanding for this part is easy, if you have more births than deaths in a year, the number of people alive will be higher. As we currently have 774,849 babies born each year and only 597,208 deaths, we can see that through this alone we can expect an increase of 177,641 people in the UK per year.

Movement of People

The movement of people is the relocation of people living in the world, so for the UK it is the statistics of how many people immigrate to the UK over how many emigrate. With current immigration levels of 588,000 per year against an emigration level of 339,000, you can see more people are coming and staying in the UK over moving to another country. This is a current increase of 249,000 to the UK population per year purely through the movement of people.

Why does the Demand for Senior Care Keep Increasing?

Life Expectancy for Males & Females

In 2016 males were expected to live until the old age of 79.1 and females enjoy 3.7 years on average extra than their male counterparts. The difference between males and females has been decreasing over the years as the gap in 1991 was 5.4 years more for females. The other trend from this data shows that even though the gap between males and females is closing, both sexes are living longer.

What this is doing to the Senior Care Franchise Market

The senior care franchise market doesn’t have a specific age range it works with as people age differently and some will need care before others, however the target market on average is anyone over the age of 65. As you can see by the graph above in the infographic, in 2016 the senior care franchise industry had a target market of 18% for the UK population. This equates to roughly 11.8 million people that would need some form of senior care.

When you look into the future, we are predicted to have a much higher percentage of the UK population over the age of 65, due to an increase in life expectancy. This combined with the increase of the UK population means that by 2036 we can expect the 11.8 million target market for senior care to grow to a massive 17.5 million. This is an increase of 5.7 million potential customers added to the market over 20 years and it is expected to continue to increase after.

As mentioned at the beginning, the increase of demand for senior care franchises isn’t directly related to the performance on the franchises themselves. With an increase to the population and a higher percentage of people over the age of 65, the demand for senior care is coming from the fact that more people are requiring this service. This creates a very positive outlook for the senior care franchise market over the next 30 years, which is an incredible forecast for any industry.

If you want to know more about the senior care franchise industry, then take a look at some of the franchises we have to offer – Care Franchise Opportunities